Bitcoin Cash Update: First Week of Action

Bitcoin Cash, the resulting currency from last Tuesday’s User Activated Hard Fork (Divergence of the Bitcoin Blockchain), that had the internet abuzz with optimistic speculation and nervous anticipation is a week old and the dust seems to be settling. So how did the new kid on the block fair?

The Bitcoin ‘civil war’ ended with the birth of Bitcoin Cash. Born of the BIP148 solution to the Bitcoin Blockchain’s long dragging scaling debate, BCC is similar to it’s older brother in that its core programmings ports Proof of Work SHA-256 hashing, a 21 million coin supply cap, and identical block time and reward protocols, but operates without Segregated Witness.

Bitcoin Cash also features block sizes of up to 8MB – as opposed to Bitcoin’s 1MB (with a window to increase them further should the need arise) – SIGHASH_FORKID replay prevention, as well as REQ-7 downward difficulty adjustment (difficulty drops by 20% should fewer than 6 blocks be mined within a 12 hour period).

This upstart coin caused such a stir, that it was trading between R9,000 and $12,000 in the days leading up to the Hard Fork and before the currency really even existed. In fact, there was so much speculation and confusion around the Fork that many people had emptied their exchange accounts and moved their coins to private wallets as it wasn’t clear which exchanges would support Bitcoin Cash, or how users would access their newly minted coins, resulting from the split.

Coinbase which initially opted not to support Bitcoin Cash experienced mass withdrawals which clogged their systems, causing transaction backlogs of up to 12 hours or more.Cryptocurrency exchanges, Livecoin, OKcoin and ViaBTC gave the fledgling currency some credibility by announcing support for BCC while others were still on the fence about it. ViaBTC was bullish enough about the new token that it had BCC futures trading on their platform well ahead of the fork.

After the first block had been mined, BBC picked up so much momentum that, Coinbase did a complete about-face on their initial position and announced they would support BCC afterall. Perhaps bouyed by news of crypto exchanges like Bitfinex, Bitflyer, Bithumb, Bittrex, Bitr, BTCC, Coinsecure, Cryptopia, Kraken, Houbi.pro etc. throwing their weight behind BCC along with wallet providers; BitcoinQT, Trezor, Jaxx, Electrum, Exodus, Ledger, etc. BBC briefly usurped payment rail system, Ripple’s crypotoken and took the third spot behind Bitcoin proper and Ethereum on the list of biggest Cryptocurrencies.

As digital currency expert, Aleksandar Matanovic, once predicted, the Bitcoin Blockchain split was not without its share of hiccups as exchanges and wallets, struggled to adjust their software to accommodate BCC, many reported massive payout delays that strained their systems to the point of crashing.

Bitcoin Cash’s Price has been all over the place all week but has been steadily falling from over R5,000 on August first to R2,720 at the time of writing. Experts believe the drop in price is largely due to Bitcoin Cash holders, exchanging their coins for Bitcoin, or Fiat currencies. The mass sells off caused BCC to drop to fourth place with ripple reclaiming the third position.

It is likely that Bitcoin Cash will continue to sell at a fraction of the value of Bitcoin as was seen with Ethereum and Ethereum Classic after Ethereum blockchain diverged last year, or we might see BBC’s dynamic difficulty come to its rescue, giving miners incentive to lend it hashing power and grow its blockchain.

Let’s watch and see, what do you think Bitcoin Cash price will be 1 year from now?